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Refugees from Myanmar arrive in South Korea

In this June 26, 2014 photo, a girl, self-identified as Rohingya, stands close to her family’s tent house at Dar Paing camp for refugees, suburbs of Sittwe, Western Rakhine state, Myanmar. Suu Kyi’s many supporters overseas have been dismayed by her silence over the plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority who have faced decades of persecution and have only been treated worse since the end of the junta. Rohingya were allowed to vote in 2010, but are being denied in 2015 from voting.(AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Refugees from Myanmar arrived in South Korea to be resettled after having spent a long time in a refugee camp in Thailand. These are the first to benefit from South Korea’s program of resettling refugees.

On Wednesday 23 December, four families from Myanmar arrived in South Korea through Incheon airport. They families consisted of 22 people, with 13 children and 9 adults. These families would the first among others to benefit from South Korea’s law for refugees which was approved in 2012 to resettling refugees program handled by United Nations, which allows refugees to settle in a third country.

Ministry of Justice chose these refugees after receiving recommendations from the high commissioner of refugees in July and conducting a number of interviews in Thailand. All the families are from the minority of “Karin” from Myanmar, some of them lived in Thailand’s refugee camps for 19 years.

These families are expected to stay at the immigration center in Incheon for a period varying from six months to one year to learn Korean language and have some basic and legal necessary education.

The government is planning to establish a committee to help these families in their settlement. The government also plans to accept 30 refugees from Myanmar yearly for three years.